Category: Introduction to Literary Theory

A. Aristotle’s Poetics
B. Leo Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata
C. John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
D. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

A. Harold Bloom’s “An Elegy for the Canon”
B. Jacques Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage … ”
C. Cleanth Brooks’s “Keats’s Sylvan Historian”
D. Edward Said’s Orientalism

A. A figure of judgment
B. Religious belief
C. A witness
D. Psychological treatment

A. Trauma theory
B. Ecotheory
C. Game theory
D. Marxist theory

A. History comprises the essential framework for the performance of literary analysis
B. Politics and the economy are the most important factors in literary analysis
C. Biography is essential to literary analysis
D. Psychoanalysis is critical to literary analysis

A. Literary criticism is concerned only with the meaning of a literary work, while literary theory is concerned only with the structure of a literary work.
B. Literary criticism draws upon research derived from sources outside literature, while literary theory draws upon sources within a text.
C. Literary criticism is concerned with how characters in a text act, while literary theory is concerned with why characters act.
D. Literary theory is concerned with the method used to interpret a work, while literary criticism is the application of literary theory.

A. All linguistic concepts evolve solely out of the responses of people within a specific historical era.
B. All linguistic and social phenomena are texts, and the object of studying these texts is to reveal the underlying codes that make them meaningful.
C. All linguistics is in some way related to class struggle.
D. All linguistics is related to history, and therefore the meaning of linguistics relies exclusively on historical context.

A. Understanding sexuality is crucial to understanding culture.
B. Understanding homosexuality has little effect on understanding culture.
C. Literary study is unaffected by a lack of interest in sexuality.
D. Understanding homosexual themes in novels has become too routine

A. Suggesting that the study of literature is based on the breakdown of language into signs
B. Arguing that language, and therefore literary texts, relies on the difference between terms and therefore constantly defers meaning.
C. Calling into question the capacity of language to communicate
D. All of the above.

A. Language is inseparable from its historical context.
B. There are five phases of linguistic development.
C. Language can be analyzed as a formal system of elements.
D. Linguistics is too complicated to be distilled to a formula.